How We Met
Andrew and I met back in 2011 when I was a sophomore at Eastern University. We apparently met on the first day of class (we had a math class together), but I have no recollection of it! He perfectly remembers walking into class the very first day and seeing this cute girl (me) so he decided to sit beside her and introduce himself. Apparently I was just like “yeah hi I’m Abby” and then continued talking to some other guy (whoops!). We never really spoke after that, but I do remember always thinking of him as “that cute boy who rides a barbie scooter around campus” LOL. Flash forward to the night we got back from Thanksgiving break, me and my roommate ran into Andrew and some of his friends in Wawa. Andrew approached my roommate and started a conversation with her (he said it was all a ploy to talk to me but he was too afraid to come right up to me!) and I quickly joined in.
I remember getting back into our dorm room that night, talking about him and then we both decided to follow him on twitter. After a few silly tweets sent back and forth, I decided to steal his number out of another girls phone and just go for it. I remember the first time I texted him I just said “hey it’s Abby, wanna hangout?” Looking back on this I can’t believe I had that much courage, but from there it is all history! We spent the remaining few weeks of the semester hanging out every chance we got and we quickly became inseparable. Andrew came to visit me at my parents house a few days before Christmas, which was when he officially asked me to be his girlfriend. After only a few weeks of dating I knew that he was the one. He has always been my best friend and biggest supporter and I am so excited to make him my husband!
how they asked
I had bothered Andrew with the marriage topic a few times in the months leading up to the proposal. We kept saying we wanted to get married Summer of 2017 however it didn’t seem like Andrew was truly thinking and planning for it. I am definitely the planner in the relationship and he is a spur of the moment guy! Working in the wedding industry I knew how much time I needed in order to plan a wedding and all summer long I felt like my dreams of getting married next summer weren’t going to happen. Little did I know all summer long Andrew had actually been planning something! He ordered my ring in early July but it took about 6 or 7 weeks to come in. Andrew is the chillest guy but he said he had so much anxiety about the ring for most of the summer! It finally came in the last week of August on a Wednesday and he proposed to me that Saturday (8/27/2016). I am currently living outside of Philadelphia and he is in Maryland so we spend our weekends traveling to see each other.
My parents live in York County, PA so we will often go there too. We had spent the two weekends before we got engaged at my parents house so I was looking forward to Andrew coming up to my apartment that weekend. So Wednesday night (when the ring came in) Andrew had my dad call me and make up a bunch of lies to get me home again that weekend. The reason why he had to get me home was because he wanted to propose to me at a lake near my parents house. So my dad calls me and tells me that because Andrew is from Maryland and is a first time hunter, they have to go to the courthouse to sign more papers so he can go hunting with my dad and brother this year (all a huge lie! lol). I 100% believed the lie and was so grumpy that I had to drive again that weekend.
I told my dad to call the courthouse to see if it could be done some other time (in hindsight this is really hilarious). For whatever reason, the next morning I texted my dad and was like it’s fine we will come home. So flash forward to Saturday, it was just a normal day, or so I thought. We woke up and went out for breakfast with my parents and then my dad and Andrew went to the “courthouse” (he even brought his hunting tags to fool me!) and me and my mom went and got our nails done. I didn’t think anything of this because she gets her nails done pretty frequently and sometimes when I am home she just wants to spoil me. So after we get home from the nail salon, we just hung out, watched some tv and played Yahtzee with my family. Then after dinner I got ready and we headed to the lake.
Side-note: Two summers ago I took a silhouette photo of us on my iPhone with a self timer app (shown above) and it turned out really great. So last summer Andrew actually completely surprised me and painted that photo for me (can you say best gift ever!). So for the past few months Andrew kept saying “I want to go back to the lake and take another picture like that”. I completely agreed and never thought anything about it because by now he is used to me wanting to take a million pictures and we love hanging out at the lake.
We got to the lake about an hour before sunset and we were just hanging out. Andrew was skipping rocks and I was sitting on the blanket just enjoying our time together. He had brought a big bulky sweatshirt (where he was hiding the ring) and I was like “why do you have this?” and he said it was to prop my phone up on for the pictures. Naturally I thought it was a great idea! So we took a few pictures as the sun was setting and as I thought we were getting ready to leave, he told me to turn around because he wanted to take one more picture of just me. So he takes a picture of me and then turns around and starts acting a little weird (he had a photographer hiding in the bushes and was looking for him). I was still pretty clueless though. He then started saying a bunch of sweet things to me about how much he loves me and wants to spend his life taking care of me, and that’s when I realized what was about to happen! Then with the sweetest smile on his face, Andrew got down on one knee and said “Abby May Wagner, I love you so much and want to spend the rest of my life with you, will you marry me?”
I instantly said yes and I was so shocked/nervous that my hands couldn’t stop shaking!
When we got back to my parents house that night my parents, brother, Andrew’s parents and his two sisters were all there and we had a little party! It was perfect and I couldn’t have asked for anything better. I cannot wait for next summer to marry the man of my dreams!
